Andrew Swiler Bought a SaaS Business with an SBA Loan and Ran It from Barcelona

The Setup Andrew Swiler wanted a software business, not a route-density home services roll-up. The problem most searchers hit with SaaS is well known: multiples run hot, sellers expect strategic pricing, and SBA lenders get skittish about intangible-heavy balance sheets. Swiler worked the other side of that equation. Instead of chasing a venture-scale target, he looked for a profitable, founder-run SaaS small enough to clear SBA underwriting on cash flow, not growth story. Lanteria fit. It is an HR management platform built in the Microsoft ecosystem (SharePoint and Microsoft 365), serving mid-market employers who already live inside Microsoft tooling. Recurring revenue, high gross margins, a sticky integration footprint, and a customer base that does not churn casually because switching an HRIS is genuinely painful. The Deal - Earnings: approximately $650K SDE - Financing: SBA 7(a) loan - Structure: self-funded search, not a traditional two-step - Operator base: Barcelona, Spain, running the company remotely The interesting move was financing. SBA works for SaaS, but lenders want to see clean recurring revenue, a real transition plan, and a buyer who can underwrite the technical risk. Swiler came in with the software background to satisfy the last part and picked a target where the numbers were small enough that the bank was solving a normal small-business credit problem, not a venture valuation problem. Operating Moves Running a SaaS company remotely from Barcelona forces discipline that a colocated team can skip. - Async by default. Documentation, written decisions, and tickets carry the load that hallway conversations would otherwise carry. - Keep the existing engineering team intact. Tribal knowledge inside a niche Microsoft-stack product is the actual asset, and ripping it out to install new leadership is how small SaaS deals get wrecked post-close. - Leave the product thesis alone for the first stretch. The founder built something customers pay for; the acquirer's job is to understand why before changing anything. - Treat customer concentration and renewal behavior as the top dashboard item. In a sub-$1M SDE SaaS, two or three churned logos is the difference between debt service and default. Operating Lessons - Size the target to the financing. SBA can finance SaaS, but only when the valuation sits inside the range the lender will underwrite on cash flow. Chasing the next tier up pushes you into equity stories that do not fit a 10-year amortization. - Buy inside an ecosystem you can defend. Lanteria's Microsoft integration is both the moat and the reason a generalist acquirer cannot easily copy it. - Remote operation is a feature, not a workaround. If the business was already distributed, buying it and running it from another continent is lower risk than a local deal that assumed the founder's daily presence. - Technical literacy is underwriting. The seller, the lender, and the team all need to believe the new owner can read the code base and the roadmap. Non-technical searchers hit a wall here. - Recurring revenue hides a lot of sins, but only if renewals actually renew....